Intel Shows Off Android Prototype with Medfield Chip

Although Intel’s business is still focused on building chips for personal computers and netbooks, the company is trying with no luck to enter the smartphone market with one of its hardware products or some revolutionary software.

Even though the company has been working for years on a low power consumption mobile chip that could replace ARM-based chips, Intel’s efforts were unsuccessful due to various reasons that the company will probably never care to disclose publicly.

Moreover, Intel’s project to deliver a completely new open project mobile platform called Meego failed last year. Nokia, Intel’s partner in this endeavor, has signed an agreement with Microsoft for the Windows Phone operating system and dropped the MeeGo project entirely.

All in all, it looks like the company managed to find its course in the smartphone market with a new product that compressed Intel’s three-chip architecture into a single system-on-a-chip.

 

Dubbed Medfield, the latest chip in the Atom family is an important step forward for the company especially given its low power consumption technology.

 

The folks over at TechnologyReview managed to get their hands on the first smartphone prototype that is equipped with the new power-efficient Medfield chip.

 

According to Intel, this is a “reference design” that can be used by handset manufacturers who want their smartphones to be equipped with Intel’s latest mobile chip solution. However, as Intel mentions, this is not mandatory at all.

 

Furthermore, Stephen Smith, VP of Intel’s architecture group confirmed that the first smartphones to carry the company’s Medfield chips will be announced in the first half of 2012.

 

"We expect products based on these to be announced in the first half of 2012," said Stephen Smith, vice president of Intel's architecture group.

 

It appears that Intel’s prototype runs Android Gingerbread platform and plays Blu-Ray quality videos, which can be streamed to larger screens.

 

Smith claims that the Medfield chip has certain circuits built within its architecture to make Web browsing and the Android apps faster than usual.